1988 100 hp Mercury-Starter Problems

[hobbs10]

I recently replaced my original starter. The old starter did not engage at all and the bendix would often get stuck. I had it rebuilt once but it slowly got worse over the last year. The new starter seemed to work at installation turned over 4 or 5 times fine. When I got the boat on the water, the starter did not always engage. It seems to have flat spot on it about 1 out of 5 cranks. Could this be a solenoid problem? Alignment problem (which i didn't think I had to do any aligning)? Or did I just get a bad starter?

 

[sutor623]

Re: 1988 100 hp Mercury-Starter Problems

You can try and bypass the solenoid and go straight to the starter. You can use jumper cables, but I use my emergency jumper kit. If the starter engages then you have an issue with either your solenoid, or corrosion/connection problem in main wires. Somewhere along your path electricity is not making it to the final destination. Hopefully we can rule out the starter itself.